90 Facts from 2024

We send out a weekly email every Sunday to over 120,000 investors featuring our favorite research, podcast, articles, facts & figures.

Here are 90 facts we’ve shared in 2024.

Mutual Funds & ETFs

SpaceX, which accounted for 38% of all mutual fund assets invested in private companies, is responsible for mutual funds’ net gain on their private-company investments. Absent SpaceX, mutual funds have collectively lost about 1.3% on their private positions. Link

In 2021, investors paid almost $90 billion in total fees on about $14 trillion of actively managed mutual funds. Link

There are 50 mutual funds (with over $72 billion in assets) distributing between 14-52% in capital gains this year. Link

“the Refinitiv Lipper database gives the median turnover of a US mutual fund as 39%, implying a holding period of just 2.5 years.” Link

74% of active ETF assets are in the Top 10 issuers. Link

Alternative Investing

Sequoia distributed more than $43 billion to its investors over the past five years, including $10 billion in 2023. Link

Millennium has generated $56 billion in gains for investors after fees since the firm’s inception in 1989. Link 

"The world’s largest private capital firms have avoided income taxes on more than $1tn in incentive fees since 2000..." Link

Private capital funds have taken more money from investors than they’ve distributed back to them in gains for six straight years, for a total gap of $1.56 trillion over that period. Link

Last year, U.S. venture firms invested $60 billion more than they collected, the highest such deficit in PitchBook’s 26 years of data. Meanwhile, they returned $26 billion worth of shares back to their investors, the lowest amount since 2011. Link

17% of venture funds larger than $750 million have returned to investors more than 2.5x the total value to paid-in capital, after fees and expenses. Link

Less than 10% of startups in 1995 had a common venture capital firm, compared to over 50% by 2018. Link

Immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America's startup companies valued at $1 billion dollars or more. Link

Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and Google accounted for 8% of all North American VC dollars in 2023. Link

Vitol, the world's largest independent oil trading company, has made more money in the last 3 years ($32 billion total) than during the past 30 years combined. That's ~$71 million each on average for its 450 trader-shareholders. Link

“Last year, Norway’s $1.5tn sovereign wealth fund revealed that it had lost NKr980mn, roughly $92mn, on an error relating to how it calculated its mandated benchmark.” Link

Investing

"From 1965 through 2023, $100 invested in Berkshire grew to $4,255,516. The same $100 invested in the S&P 500 is only $30,811. That means Berkshire can lose 99.3% and only then just match the index over 59 years." Link

The dollar sum of stock-based compensation rose from $26 billion in 2006 to $290 billion in 2023. Link

Almost 75% of companies paid a dividend in the late 1970s; it declined to 35% in 2021. Link

Stanley Black & Decker has paid a dividend for 147 consecutive years, longer than any other industrial company on the NYSE. Link

Japan’s stock market hit a record high on February 22, 2024 after 34 years of waiting. Link

From 2000 to 2023, public companies in the U.S. issued nearly $10 trillion in equity and retired just over $14 trillion. Link

BlackRock has returned an average of 20.7% per year since its IPO in 1999, outperforming the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, Amazon and Microsoft. Link

A drawdown larger than 20% only happened three times since 1945 without a recession taking place within 12 months (before or after). Link

The number of custodial accounts at Charles Schwab increased from 120,000 in 2019 to more than 300,000 in 2023. Link

About a third of all S&P 500 trades are now executed in the final 10 minutes of trading, up from 27% in 2021. Link

British funds held just 4.4% of their portfolios in UK stocks, compared with a global average of 10.1% for similar domestic investment — one of the lowest proportions of any significant global pension market, according to a report from New Financial. Link

Over 10% of Fortune 500 company CEOs are Indian immigrants who studied in the US. Link

Almost 20% of S&P 500 CEOs spent part of their careers at either GE or Procter & Gamble. Link

Ex-US Markets

Of the roughly 8,000 listed China-based companies, only about 600 have made an average return on capital of more than 10% over the last five years. Link

The Shanghai Stock Exchange composite rose 105% in one day in 1992. Link

3 of the 10 largest economies in the world - China, India and Brazil - are emerging markets and account for almost 25% of global GDP. Link

Since their introduction as an asset class in 1988, EM equities have outperformed developed markets. Link

Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is projected to account for a quarter of the world’s working-age population within a few decades and have more people of working age than China in about 10 years. Link

Almost one fifth of government revenues are now used to service foreign loans in Africa. Link

Companies

In 2023, McDonald's bought 2 billion eggs from agribusiness giant Cargill. Link

There are 33 million Starbucks Rewards members (1/10 American adults). At the end of March 2024, there was $1.9 billion of stored card value on Starbucks’ balance sheet. Link

Amazon has over 17,000 chargers at about 120 warehouses around the US, making it the largest operator of private electrical vehicle charging infrastructure in the country. Link

The R&D spending of Amazon is greater than the R&D spending of all companies and government in France. Link

Between 2017 and 2021, Amazon had more than $25 billion in losses from its devices business (Echos, Fire TV Sticks, video doorbells, Kindles), according to The Wall Street Journal. Link

Apple has created ~$2.7 trillion in wealth from its IPO in 1981 to the end of 2022, more than any other company. During that same time period, Apple suffered three drawdowns of 70% or more. Link

Apple has spent more than $20 billion to produce original TV shows and movies. However, Apple TV+ generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day. Link

Apple’s 2023 revenue (almost $400 billion) makes it about as big as the entire economy of Denmark or the Philippines. Link

Wells Fargo estimates Costco was selling as much as $200 million in gold bars per month in April 2024. Link

Walmart now does $100 billion per year in e-commerce sales. Link

J.P. Morgan has more employees in Texas than Florida. Link

Uber’s advertising run rate is now over $1 billion. Link

Spotify is now the #2 provider of audio books behind Audible. Link

Personal Finance

Americans believe it takes a net worth of $2.5 million to be considered wealthy in 2024, a 14% jump from last year. Link 

In 2023, millionaires accounted for 1.5% of the adult population analyzed, and the U.S. had 38% of all millionaires. Link

"When 120 of Cornelius Vanderbilt's descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973 for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them." Link

Americans throw away up to $68 million in coins a year. Link

As of the end of 2022, there are now more $100 bills than $1 bills in circulation. Link

44% of employer 401(k) contributions accrue to the top 20% of earners. Link

Americans spent $186 billion pets last year, more than was spent on childcare. Link

1 million people now owe more than $200,000 in federal student loans. Link

Roughly 50% college graduates have jobs that don’t use their degrees. Link

“Allen Iverson, who went broke despite earning nearly $200 million in salary and endorsements and is hanging on to reach his 55th birthday seven years from now when he will receive $32 million from Reebok, thanks to a lifetime contract he signed with the shoe company in 2001.” Link

At the end of June, 8.5% of U.S. homes are worth $1 million or more, the highest share of all time. Link

Fraud

Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced to death in Vietnam's largest financial fraud case ever. She was accused of fraud amounting to $12.5 billion - nearly 3% of the country's 2022 GDP. Link

1 in 13 Americans have participated in a multi-level marketing business. Link

Americans lost $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency fraud scams in 2023. Link

Impostor scam losses tripled between 2019 and 2023 to $2.7 billion, according to The Federal Trade Commission. Link

United States

Kentucky has the highest concentration of people with weight-loss drug prescriptions of any state in the US. Link

The US has built more commercial nuclear reactors (two) in the past 25 years than it has major commercial airports (zero). Link

Around 45% of America’s representatives are over the age of 60. That is a higher proportion than any other country in the OECD, where the average is 19%. Link

79 of the 100 most expensive U.S. zip codes in 2023 were in California. Link

The number of bank branches in the U.S. peaked in 2012. Link

Ireland is the largest exporter of pharmaceuticals to the United States. In 2023, the US imported twice as many pharmaceutical products from Ireland as it did from Canada, China, India, and Mexico combined. Link

“While only 4% of the world’s population, the U.S. often accounts for half or more of worldwide revenue for a new drug.” Link

In the first half of 2024, stock pay alone at four major technology companies accounted for almost 10% of the state’s total income tax withholding. Link

Sports

Parlay bets account for 70% of total bets on FanDuel. Link

There are more than one billion Cricket fans in the world, but just 2% of them are in the United States. Link

"There are 17 American men in history who have run under 2:10 in the marathon. There were 32 Kalenjin (an East African tribe) who did it in October of 2011." Link

Nearly 400,000 guests stayed at Airbnbs in Paris for the Olympics, equivalent to 5 Olympic stadiums. Link

Olympians who win a medal took home a real piece of the Eiffel Tower. Each medal includes 18 grams (0.04 pounds) of the Eiffel iron. Link

Innovation

~5% of listed companies at the beginning of 2023 are more than 50 years old. Link

More than 85% of total U.S. employment growth since 1940 has come in entirely new occupations. Link

The horse population declined by almost 90% between 1910 to 1960. Link 

20 years after the electric light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879, just 3% of US households had electricity. Link

Regulatory outlays have doubled in real terms since the 1970’s. Link

The U.S. produced more crude oil than any nation, at any time, for the past six years in a row, according to the International Energy Statistics. Link

The emissions that a modern tractor trailer puts out are 1/75th of what a tractor trailer put out in the 1980's. Link

Over the past 30 years, battery costs have fallen by 99%. Link

Miscellaneous 

If you shuffle a deck of cards, most likely that combination has never been shuffled by anyone, in history, ever. Link

The top 20 PINs (out of 10k) constitute 27% of all PIN numbers. Link

Anguilla’s government made $32 million in 2023, more than 10% of its G.D.P., from companies registering web addresses that end in .ai. Link

Workers missed an average of 19.4 days because of illness in Germany in 2023. Link

"only about 7 percent made it through Nobel Prize economist Daniel Kahneman’s magnum opus, Thinking, Fast and Slow." Link

We send out a weekly email every Sunday to over 120,000 investors featuring our favorite research, podcast, articles, facts & figures.